There's something very smug about these parodies of Washington insiders. Even The West Wing gets tedious with its dozen storylines about whether the president should say a few words against a lobbying group. At first this book has the potential to overcome that curse. It's wry. It has a morally ambiguous main character. It has some great parodies.

Then it dies. It reminds me of Primary Colors in that it's way too enamored with the political process to really get things rolling. There's too much material about taking meetings and not enough about people. The characters are all broadly drawn, the females are vixens, the jokes aren't funny. When it gets to Hollywood the writer trots out the same old cliche about Hollywood producers wanting to throw any crap on the screen in order to sell products. Is this supposed to be funny? I suppose in the Player it was cool, but the joke has died from misuse.

Overall this is a fluff book that should have been better. The main problem is the cool cynicism. Yeah, everyone is out to get something. Yeah that's funny sometimes, but not here. When all is said and done we're left with a bunch of unlikeable characters in a stupid book.